ABSTRACT
Probably the most famous classification of suicide is that by the sociologist Durkheim who believed that in order to understand what people did, we had to look at the way in which they interacted with their social as well as their physical environment. In his study of suicide (Durkheim, 1897) he attempts to show that variations in suicide rates result from differences in the form of social life in different places and classifies suicide according to the extent to which the individual was integrated with, or separated from, society. His sociological model sets out four categories of suicide. Egoistic suicide is carried out by an individual who is under-integrated within society. Since such a person is relatively speaking detached from society, Durkheim thinks he is more vulnerable to suicide because at times of stress he has less to hold on to than those who share common beliefs with their fellows. In contrast an individual who is over-integrated into society would be said by Durkheim to carry out altruistic suicide. Such a person, he thinks, is too weak to resist the demands of society that he must suicide. His third type of suicide, anomic suicide, he believes is performed by individuals who are under-regulated by the norms and values of society, while its converse, fatalistic suicide, results from over-regulation of the individual.
